Memorial Day
by Neftzer
Summary: Steve Rogers attends an important funeral and a reception around the time of 'Civil War'. Birthday gift to interestinggin. Two-shot.
1. Service

For some reason it felt good to attend a funeral.

Weird, right? But it did.

He'd missed so many in his time away. Howard's. That had to have been unreal. Probably was all over the papers and the newsreels. Telegram from the President. Dum Dum's—imagine the wake, he thought. Something Thor might have felt at home at.

Maybe good wasn't the best word. He didn't feel good. He felt—as lost as he had that first day he woke up.

But at least it felt normal. It felt natural to attend a funeral when you were grieving a loss.

And Peggy, really, a loss for him on so many fronts.

He wished it were acceptable to wear a hat, something to throw some shade over his face among the mourners, make him (he thought) more difficult to recognize.

They were older, elderly. Accustomed to sending off their friends and loved ones. Her family was there—young kids that must have been her great-grandchildren. Great nieces and nephews.

He had meant to send flowers—that at least had not changed. But when he went to do it, all he could think was to buy the largest, most overwhelming arrangement possible. He nearly did. Then he took a breath and walked out of the florist's.

He had thought about making some sort of covered dish for her family. The sort of thing in his day a wife would have done. But he didn't have a wife, and he didn't know a whole lot about cooking up a covered dish. Wasn't actually sure he owned a dish with a cover.

He could have a condolence printed in the paper. But why? The only person he would have wanted to read it would have been her.

He felt like a man attending the memorial service for his best girl, but for some reason having no real claim to her, no claim (in the light of her family) even to his own grief.

Maybe he would take some of his money (he hardly ever used it) and put it aside for something. A scholarship, maybe, in Peggy's honor. For a girl. Yeah, that might work. Romanov might know how go about that.

He was thinking about this as he let the crowd move him toward the casket, under a tent as those involved in the graveside portion of the ceremony must have expected rain (which had not yet arrived). It wasn't until he was up beside the spray of dozens of all-white roses atop the casket that he realized he'd been shuffled toward the receiving line of her family.

In the realization of it, he tripped, the toe of his foot hooking over the metal frame holding the casket above the open vault below.

He let out an instinctual 'ugh', bent at the middle to keep his balance, and when he straightened, found himself directly opposite the man he knew to be Peggy's husband (though they'd never been introduced).

"Captain," the man said, seeming to be every bit as shocked at seeing Steve as Steve was at seeing him. The man's back seemed to straighten at his speaking Steve's rank, the leg he had slid to the side and next to which he had a forearm crutch, for a moment slid back into its proper place, gained the man an inch or more in height.

"I, uh," he had no idea what to say. "I'm sorry." He should have said 'for your loss', but he did not trust himself to pronounce 'your', and not 'my'.

"Thanks, you—you came."

"Yeah. I hope, that is, I hope that was okay."

"Sousa," the man said, though Steve already knew his name. "Daniel Sousa," he had grabbed Steve's hand to shake it with both of his, the crutch dangling for a moment off its cuff. His grip, for a man of his age was bracing. "It's very much okay. Thank you for making the trip."

"There's no place else," Steve began, but stalled out before adding 'I'd rather be'.

"No," Daniel Sousa jumped in, "there isn't. And yet I would rather be anywhere, right?"

Steve felt his cheek contract with the arc of a grin—instantly turned bittersweet-at the other man's understanding of his poorly-given sentiment. "Yeah. Exactly."

This Sousa still had his hand, and though he could have easily broken the contact, Steve did not.

Using that grip as leverage, the elderly man leaned in and asked, "Come to the house, Captain Rogers, Sir," inviting Steve to the after-funeral and meal. His eyebrows pulled together and raised in hopes his invitation would be accepted.

"Ah," Steve couldn't seem to stop stammering, "I, uh—"

"Did you come alone?" Sousa asked, "you can bring someone with you if—"

"No, I-I came alone. But I couldn't impose on all of you like that. I wouldn't…belong—"

Peggy's husband had been keenly attentive (uncomfortably so) as he made a disaster of turning down the invitation.

"Fair enough," the other man did not try to wave away his announcement of being an outsider to the occasion. "What'd'you say, tonight, you and I meet at the Mainliner on Quarry. You know it? Maybe seven or so?"

Steve threw a doubtful glance over to the rest of Peggy's family assembled.

"No, no—they've been in town for a week, and they're staying another after this. I won't be much missed. I, uh, maybe we can raise a glass of something."

It was clear from Daniel Sousa's expression that he was not at all certain his invitation would be accepted.

"I think I'd like that," Steve said, only realizing as he spoke the words that it might indeed be so.

He left the graveside shortly thereafter, but not the cemetery. He rode his bike off far enough in the distance not to be seen, and waited until no mourners or family were left, standing witness afar off as workers lowered her into the ground, pushed the dirt upon her, and then themselves left.

He was still there as the sun slid lower in the sky, toward the horizon, and drew him back to where she lay.

But even as he stood there he realized it was more than Peggy herself he was thinking of, realized that the hole, now filled in before him, seemed to hold everyone—their faces shuttling past him. Pinky's laugh, Happy Sam's 'happy' face. Saw himself, even: pre-serum Steve, buying clothes off the young boys' rack, being mistaken for everyone's kid brother.

He wondered how such a relatively small hole could seem to contain so much.

 _ **...tbc...**_

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	2. Reception for Two

The Mainliner on Quarry was not the sort of bar new people came to or discovered, not a place which would ever be threatened with the term "renovated" or "hip urban", for all that it was in the city.

But it had an antique charm and undeniable authenticity that upon his arrival Steve Rogers took a level of comfort in.

It had started to rain (as the funeral tent had suggested would happen) as he rode his bike into this part of the city. He didn't mind being wet as long as he was out in the rain, but coming into the bar, a spot he already felt at a disadvantage in, he felt something like an unwelcome, wet dog.

He gave his head a sharp shake to one side to throw what water he could out of his hair.

It took no time at all to locate the man he had come there to meet.

Steve Rogers could not be sure that Daniel Sousa had a favorite table at this bar, but the spot Peggy's husband was sitting in-table with two chairs, close enough to shout to the barkeep—looked of a perfect fit.

"Glad you showed," Sousa told him, half-rising out of his chair as Steve approached the table. He was a man who wore his age well, but not so well that recent events hadn't likely deepened lines around his eyes and mouth. "You eat?"

Steve shrugged. He'd come straight from the cemetery.

"Got a house full of food," Sousa confessed, "it all tastes like paper."

Steve nodded, and took the offered seat.

"It's not the sort of place with a menu—" Sousa half-apologized. "But if it's simple, they can make something for you."

"I was there," Steve told him, without explanation. "Kinda lost track of time."

Daniel Sousa looked over at him. "I know," he said, with a slow nod. "Found you there when I drove back."

He felt caught-out. "I didn't mean—"

"There's no reason you shouldn't be allowed your time, Captain," Sousa said, waving off his apology and using Steve's rank like the former soldier he was. "I've got the rest of my days to haunt that place if need be."

"Thanks." He meant it. Thanks for letting him be, for not begrudging him that long moment. Thanks for inviting him here, for giving him some sort of destination besides his own head or his empty apartment at the end of this day. Thanks.

"What are you drinking?" Sousa asked him, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, and for the next minutes talk turned to beers, and forgotten brands, bottle vs. can and the like.

"So, Bastogne," Steve said after awhile, raising his chin toward Sousa's leg, once their drinks had arrived.

"Yeah—," Sousa agreed, and then turned confused, "but you couldn't reme—You read my file!" he realized.

"Yeah," Steve thought he should ready another apology, but for some reason the notion that he had read Daniel Sousa's file, as though Sousa had been applying for some job or other struck him as vaguely funny.

"S'okay," Sousa told him, shrugging it off. "I read yours."

"Mine? Yeah?" he gave a sort of chuckle.

"Bit of a rite of passage, you know—once we passed that level of clearance: reading the Project Rebirth file."

"I'll bet." He almost rolled his eyes. He liked this Sousa well enough, but the notion of strangers poring over what had been his life like he was some specimen in a test tube was never a comfortable one.

It had been too many years since men he had trusted like Dr. Erskine and Howard Stark had been the gatekeepers of his transformation and life beyond.

"And being around Howard and Peggy," Sousa continued, "well, there wasn't much avoiding the subject of you."

"They talked about me?" He didn't know what to think about that. What would they have said? Or felt? Had he just been a huge disappointment, all of Howard's hard work drowned in the ice?

"Maybe that was too strong a statement," Sousa back-pedaled. "No, there wasn't a lot of chatter about you. But it's like you were there, standing just beyond their line of vision—on lots of occasions. Lots of occasions. I think they spoke about it between themselves—but I was the outsider, there."

Steve gave a nod of understanding. "You met while working together, trying to crack Leviathan?"

"Yeah. Around that time."

"Was she happy? I mean, when I came back she—she didn't always know—" he shook his head trying to explain it. "It was hard to get her to talk about some things." But of course Sousa of all people would understand this, would not need it explained.

"When we met, just after the war was over, the whole world, you know, seemed to be ready to celebrate at the drop of a hat. We were home. We'd survived. Some of us handled it better than others. Peggy, well, she still had something hanging over her. I don't know if you even had to be close to her to notice it. But there were plenty of us that were in the same boat. Maybe we hadn't lost Captain America to the ice, but we'd all lost something, lost somebody, right? And you cast a big shadow, my friend. Not just on her, but on her professional life, too. It wasn't easy being known as Captain America's ex-liaison. It wasn't easy trying to get credit for the job she was able to do, even without you."

"I hadn't thought of that," he said, and it was true. He really hadn't.

"But we made a good team. We made each other happy," Sousa said. "So yeah, she was happy. Like all of us who lost people in the war, it took time. And she and I, we had bad times, too. But we had more times where we were happy. Sometimes we were just, I dunno—stupidly happy."

What he would have given to be stupidly happy. To have prevented any struggle or frustration in Peggy's life after him. "I would never have—if there had been another way, you know?" He meant to say he would never have left. He would have been true, faithful.

"You kiddin' me?" Sousa's eyebrows leapt at this. "The Battle of New York proved you made the right choice putting that thing in the ice, Captain. And she never once told me she disagreed with your call that day."

He sighed. It was not a thing you said easily, that maybe letting the world go to Hell was preferable to letting what seemed like your last chance in life—in having a life, and a love—go. "Thing is," he did say, though maybe he shouldn't have, "and this is a weird thing to say, Sousa, but…I'm in love with your wife."

He heard Sousa take a breath in through his nose, slowly, and considering.

"Me too, Rogers," he said in reply. "Me too. And neither of us can get back what we've lost." Here the newly widowed man's chin shook, and the emotion of the day threatened to take him over. He put his glass down with more force than necessary. "I been living through this Long Goodbye crap for so long, now. The guys in charge now, you know what worried them? That she'd get loose-lipped in the end. That she'd start blabbing secrets to her nurses—to her visitors. They started logging anyone who came to visit her." He inclined his head briefly to one side. "That's how I knew when she told me that day that she'd seen you it was for real."

"She told you? And you didn't mind?"

Sousa's eye shot to the ceiling for a moment, then back to his. "She was so happy. Was talking to me like it was '47 again. But she couldn't hold onto it, that memory. I'm sure you know. She would forget who I was every now and then. Get confused. But then, I don't look like my old self so much anymore, and yet you—"

"Well," he shrugged, not sure how to take on the subject of his physical appearance, "I guess I look like some version of myself."

"Speaking of which, I, uh, found this among her things. Thought you might want it." Sousa withdrew a small photograph from his inside coat pocket. "I've got her journals, too, if you like reading. If you want to borrow them, they're yours."

There he was, pre-serum, in his G.I. white t-shirt. The photographic paper in his hand felt so old and worn. It surprised him, the age. There were just too many emotions to fall into this photograph just now.

Sousa was talking again. "Look, I just—I just want to talk to you. To someone who loved her like I do. I can talk to the kids, you know—to our friends, but it's not, it's not the same."

"They don't understand," Steve agreed.

"You've gotta feel that way about a lot."

He shrugged. "It's pretty much a constant," he agreed. "Truth is, I would give it all up to be sitting over there," he gestured to the man across from him. "To be you. To be me," he gestured with the picture of his skinny self.

"But you don't mean that," Sousa protested.

"No, truth is I do," which was something he would never have said out loud were it not the end of a long day like today. "It would have been the wrong decision, a bad call. But it's a call I can't stand not having had the luxury to make. You got a wife, kids, grandkids. A life. We couldn't even get a dance."

The noises of the bar around them began to fill in as they both fell silent.

Glasses clinked together in a bus pan. Something was put in the fryer in the back. A tap stuck and the bartender swore at it.

Sousa waited, and then spoke. "You're right. I did. I got all those things. And I wouldn't change a moment of it. I wouldn't change all those times I wrestled with being with the woman who'd 'traded your shield in for my crutch', as someone once told me. I can't apologize for loving her and having had the unexpected luck to have her love me back. No matter how sympathetic I feel seeing you today. I can't apologize to you for my life."

"No, no," Steve said, his voice falling down into a whisper before he recovered it again. "Meeting you, seeing you, I'm sure it wasn't luck," Steve replied, trying to settle his unchecked emotion.

"We had a son," Sousa abruptly said. "He was a little guy, our first. Came early on us. We named him Steven. Steven Michael. I'd never seen her look at anything on earth like she did him. Not me, certainly. She said he was a fighter. But all our hopes, well, he wasn't strong enough for all our hopes, and he fought for weeks, but we lost him."

Steve didn't know what to say. It was too honest, too raw (even though, how many years past?), and it was too much for him to even take in. "To…Steven Michael," he said, raising his glass.

It took a moment for Sousa to raise his as well. "To Steven Michael," he said, and the slackness in his lips seemed to say it was a name that had not been said or shared by him in some time.

"If Peg had to live in your shadow, Rogers," Sousa had begun to turn toward morose, "so be it. But no man on earth's lived in it longer than I have."  
He started to feel for a moment that had his companion been two decades younger, and a little drunker, they might well have ended up in an alley fist fight.

"But I can't be angry about it," Sousa continued. "I can't. I want to be. For so long I've secretly wanted to be. But your and Peggy's work together? Your relationship? It's a building block of the woman I love. And you and your guys? Without you, I'm dead in the snow of Bastogne. Never even meet Peggy. And now? Things going on in the world? I can't wish for a world without Captain America. My and Peggy's kids, our grandkids—they need a world with Captain America, Rogers. So I'm happy you're alive, Captain. You might be about the best man I've ever known."

Steve cast his eyes downward. It was not a line of compliment (or offense) that he felt very comfortable with. And yet he understood it. Shared the sentiment. Was glad to know he'd done at least one thing right, if he and the unit had rescued this Sousa in the war. Ice-bound Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter had no future. It would be wrong to have expected her to give up on life because he had gone into the ice. He would have been desperate today had he learned she had spent the rest of her years never living, losing out on love, closing herself off after that day. Or that she had ended up with someone less of a decent man than this Daniel Sousa.

"But you know? None of it matters now," Sousa had moved past that flash of bitterness brought on by alcohol. "Because we've both of us got to carry on."

"What are you going to do?"

"Well, I reckon I'll be sad, first and foremost. I'll see the kids, play with the little ones. Peg was in the hospital going on a while now, the house has been empty of her, so I'm probably more used to being alone and without her than I'd like to admit."

Steve nodded.

"Maybe take up a hobby. Scribble something of my memoirs, got a few people asking me to do that. How 'bout you?"

"Hard to say. My life is—not normal. Settling down, finding someone—even looking for someone—not really in the cards, I think. I've got my work cut-out for me."

"It keep you pretty busy?"

"Not too busy to think."

"And there's your problem."

Steve gave a chuckle. "What do you recommend?"

"Stopping in here every once in a while. Give me a chance to talk to you about all the things NOT in my file."

"And I can tell you the things not in mine?"

Sousa grinned, as he raised his glass to his lips. "I dunno, Captain Rogers, your file was pretty damn extensive."

Steve shrugged. "Maybe I'll surprise you."

Sousa nodded. "Fair to say you already have."

"To Peggy," said Steve, raising his second glass.

"Forever," said Sousa, raising what was left of his. "To Peggy."

 ** _...the end..._**


End file.
